


The Winchester House Rules

by puckity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester/OFC - Freeform, Fanfic, First Time, Implied Dean Winchester/OMC, Implied Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester, Jealousy, M/M, Mutual Pining, Panties, Praise Kink, Pre-Series through Season 12, Prostitution, Sex Pollen, Sibling Incest, Truth Spells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 12:18:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12606472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/pseuds/puckity
Summary: There are rules—there have to be rules—otherwise Sam and Dean wouldn’t make it out of this world in one piece.[An exploration of tropes, kinks, and meant-to-be through the Winchester life cycle(s).]





	The Winchester House Rules

**Author's Note:**

> My second foray into big bang territory, written for the awesome [2017 SPN Wincest Big Bang](https://wincestbigbang.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> You can find the artwork for this fic created by [emmatheslayer](https://emmatheslayer.livejournal.com/) [here](https://emmatheslayer.livejournal.com/478750.html)\--it was a pleasure collaborating with you!
> 
> Beta'd by the long-suffering [Rachel](http://betterwithsparkles.tumblr.com/).
> 
> You can also follow me on [Tumblr](http://puckity.tumblr.com/), if you'd like.

(excepts from)

 

**_i. Rough Housing_ **

Dad— _John Winchester, sir_ —had three unbreakables for when he rolled out of the motel parking lot and left his boys peering through the grimy three-paned window after him:

  1. Don’t break the salt lines.
  2. Don’t attract unwanted attention.
  3. Don’t get kicked out.



The specifics weren’t important, didn’t matter so long as the big three were still intact by the time he got back. So Dean could swipe as many packets of peanut M&Ms from the local Gas & Sip as he wanted and Sammy could eat nothing but Frosted Flakes and Skittles for every meal and they could turn up the TV as loud as it could go so long as the manager—or worse, the cops—didn’t come knocking at their door.

And when Saturday night rolled around they could burn a couple bags of popcorn and strip down to their t-shirts and underwear and elbow each other for a few extra inches of sofa to enjoy the highlight of their lockdown weeks: The Main Event. Their dad had taken them to a live show or two and those were great, but the whole thing always seemed smaller and less amazing in person. Something about the panorama sweeps across the stadium crowd (hundreds, or thousands; they were too young to really know then) roaring and chanting, the excess of strobe lights and the wails of guitar riffs slicing through the speakers, the tight zoom-ins to catch the flicker of victory or the snap of defeat on the wrestlers’ faces that they could never see from their ringside seats—something was just _better_ about watching it on an outdated set with just the two of them cheering.

Part of that _better_ was probably tied up with the fact that most matches ended with the two of them—more sugar and adrenaline squeezing through their veins than blood—crashing around on the floor, re-enacting their favorite moves before the final bell rang out. That was why they’d made the t-shirts and underwear rule in the first place: more mobility and less excess fabric to grab at and tear around.

When John had come home after tracking down a shifter only to find Sam’s new jeans ripped up the seams and the flannel that he’d given Dean missing a sleeve, he’d unplugged the TV and carried it down to the front desk. Told the night shift worker that if it ended up in their room again before they left he’d dump it in the soupy half-filled pool. And that was that; no more clothes that Dean couldn’t sneak a four-pack of out of the local Big Mart before their dad got back into town.

“It’s one thing to have a good time watching it, but you two don’t need to be damn _fools_ about it.” Their dad had tried to crack at the TV-less silence like an overcooked egg. “You go walkin’ around with holes in your clothes and what’re folks gonna think? Nothin’ good, especially when they figure out that you’re livin’ in a motel.”

And he’d been right, Dean knew it, but he scraped his fork and knife together along the aluminum leftover tray anyway.

It wasn’t like they didn’t wrestle around on John’s watch; that had been part of their regimen even before they ( _Dean_ ) gave Sammy the Talk. They had to learn how to fight, how to defend themselves and their dad would drill them on each position half a dozen times before he’d move onto the next lesson. But that was to keep them sharp, keep them safe—it was for their dad and the job and the things that go bump in the night.

But Saturday nights, those were just for them.

The first time it happened, Dean chalked it up to the heat—it had been a particularly warm March—and being just this side of 15. Chalked it up to the group of high school girls at the park, fresh out of winter in their shorts and low-cut V-necks. Chalked it up to being cooped up with his annoying little brother and no privacy, no personal space, nowhere to hide the magazines he’d shoved in his back pocket and pulled his hoodie over as he backed out of the last truck stop they’d hit. Hell, he couldn’t even take a piss for more than five minutes without Sammy’s fists clattering against the cheap wood paneling, muffled but persistent.

There was no shortage of things that Dean could chalk it up to, and nowhere on that list was his ten-year old baby brother. It was just an unfortunate situation all around, that the person Dean got the most (and more days than not, the only) physical contact from was Sammy.

So it happened, no big deal, neither of them brought it up and Dean told himself that Sammy probably didn’t even know what was going on. Nothing to get worked up about.

Still, Dean started bowing out of their Saturday night showdowns—just to be safe. Started pushing Sammy back into his own bed when he had a nightmare, started clapping him on the shoulder and holding him out of a hug.

Better Sammy learn now, from him, than build up habits that would only get harder and harder to break.

 

**_ii. Alcohol_ **

Sam didn’t drink, Sam got drunk.

A motel mug full of whatever was at the bottom of the bottles their dad kept rolled under the spare blankets in the fake trunk, two cans of whichever beer was on sale that day, a couple swallows of someone’s— _Bobby’s?_ —flask being passed around the edge of a pyre and the flames were only part of what made Sam burn.

Sam would hiccup and Dean would shoot him a look that was hard to read against the shifting orange-yellow backlight and the slosh behind Sam’s eyes. Dean would cuff him with his knuckles to the back of Sam’s head, rough but not sharp, as a cover for grabbing the flask away from him. Then he’d be the one getting stern looks and gruff lectures and, if the hunt had been particularly nasty, some choice words away from the group. Sam would hear the bark in their dad’s tone, trace the slump of Dean’s shoulders and the half-nods he’d give in return, and dig the toes of his shoes into the dirt.

Dean drank too, in the parts of his life that Sam couldn’t see. Sam would come home from school to an empty corner suite or fall asleep with _Twilight Zone_ reruns looping in the background and—at some point—Dean would creak in. Smelling like a lot of things that Sam could only really guess at, but he’d always recognize the bitter tang. Sometimes he’d hum quietly to himself, usually he was smiling, but he never stumbled. Never walked with anything less than the swagger Sam thought he must’ve been born with. Somewhere there had to be a long-lost tape labeled, ‘Baby’s First Strut’.

And Sam wondered where he went; wondered why Dean wouldn’t take him with. Why he didn’t even ask. There were a lot of possibilities and each new one was worse than the ones before it. Dean was running scams, sneaking into local dive bars, making two-week podunk town friends, charming his way under cheerleader and waitress and local hometown girl skirts and Sam hated it. Hated being pushed aside, being left behind. Hated that he still needed Dean, even though it’d been years since he felt like his big brother would let Sam have him all to himself. Years since he’d been all of Dean’s world, but Dean was still all the important points on his map and it wasn’t fair and Sam _hated_ it.

Sam didn’t drink at school, no matter how aggressive his rotating roster of classmates got about it. Too risky, leaving himself vulnerable like that and putting civilians in potential danger—although that’d all be an ice cream sundae compared to what John Winchester would do if he got a call from the principal’s office. Dean got away with most of what he did because he didn’t get caught; Sam had never quite mastered that finesse.

Besides, school was generally one of the good things in Sam’s life and he only drank when the bad stuff started to outweigh it. Bad like watching the corpse of a hunter who got sloppy—or maybe just unlucky—go up. Bad like sitting alone on a cigarette-burned bed for hours without a note or a call. Bad like seeing Dean come back, lipstick smeared up his neck, waving but not looking him in the eye on his way to the bathroom.

“You didn’t come.” Sam pulled his lips thin so he wouldn’t slur his way through the words. That’d seemed like a smart idea a whiskey and a half ago, but now he couldn’t really remember why.

“What?” Dean was disheveled, sweaty, but his eyes weren’t glazed so Sam guessed that—whatever had kept him out—it probably hadn’t been much fun.

Sam shoved his spine back against the headboard, tried to straighten it out. “I waited for you after practice, but you didn’t come.”

“Sorry.” Dean shrugged like an afterthought. “Something came up.”

Dean wasn’t sorry, didn’t care, and something hot and feral flared along Sam’s veins.

“I waited for an hour.” That was a lie; he’d started the walk from the high school back to the motel after about ten minutes. “But something came up so _whatever_.”

“Yeah, something fucking came up Sam! Jesus!” Dean’s jacket dropped with a loud snap on the floor and Sam didn’t mean to but the alcohol and the darkness and the weird rubber band stretch of anger that he didn’t understand—he flinched. Dean went still—after all these years, that had to be Pavlovian—and somehow that pulled all the strange, heavy feelings in the room even tighter.

“Are you _drunk_ , Sam?” Dean said it like it was ridiculous, impossible and Sam was stupid for making him think so.

“So what if I am? You can’t even pick me up from school so why would you care what I do when I get home?” The whine in Sam’s voice grated against his skin and he knew that it was the wrong button to push if he didn’t want the door—bathroom or front, dealer’s choice—slammed back at him. Some pouts could get Sam whatever he wanted from Dean but the petulant, blame-soaked, too-old-for-this tantrum wasn’t one of them. He should’ve stopped while he was ahead, shrugged it off and not given Dean another reason to leave his childish, selfish, kid brother behind.

But there was spite and bile bubbling up, filling all the Dean-shaped spaces inside of him that ached cold when his big brother was gone. Sam could taste the sourness at the back of his throat.

“Why would you care if I’m even here at all?”

For a half-second the room went frigid down to the bones and Sam was sure that Dean was gonna crack a fist against whatever part of Sam’s body he could reach first. He braced himself—palms flat against the sunken mattress, wrists locked—the best that he could.

Dean stood stiff in all the wrong ways, elbows and hips and knees jutting like he’d forgotten how to hold himself naturally. Like when he finally moved, he might creak.

For a good ten seconds it was a standoff; Dean locked in place and Sam’s heartbeat kept getting harder to swallow down. A waft of stale parking lot air from their cracked window hit him in the face, wet and cold, and Sam realized that at some point he’d started to cry.

One more fuck-up to add to his ‘Reasons Why Dean Doesn’t Want Me Around’ list and he couldn’t help it but his whole puffed-up fit of hormones and sulkiness (and something else, clinging to the corners of it) started to crumble.

“Goddamnit.”

Dean bit off the syllables, unpaused and Sam was ready to curl in on himself and let the alcohol and self-pity soak up the bad dreams that crept in whenever he slept alone. Something heavy was flung and hit the shag carpet—one dull clunk, then another and Sam was halfway to a fully-formed thought about what Dean could be doing when the weight of everything shifted. He slid towards the sudden dip in the bedding.

“You’re a pain in my ass.” The line of Dean ran hot from the base of Sam’s spine to the nape of his neck. He was tucked in with his back to Dean and there had to be at least six inches between them but Sam still felt smothered.

He burrowed back, tried to be sneaky about it but knew that Dean would catch on right away. “Sorry.”

Dean spat a laugh, coarse and rocky and Sam could feel him shaking his head. Then an arm dropped heavy over Sam’s sternum and Dean scooped him back.

“You’re _the_ pain in my ass.” Dean’s breath was muggy along Sam’s hairline.

Sam wondered how close Dean’s lips were to his skin, let the thought reel out before he stuffed it back into the cabinets he pretended weren’t boarded up in the back of his mind.

“Sorry.” It hung pathetic, a sad echo from a dumb kid.

Dean’s palm settled against Sam’s stomach. He didn’t press in.

“Go to sleep, Sammy. I got you.”

 

**_iii. Overtime_ **

It was easier once Sam was gone, packed off into a dorm room bunk bed where he could make all the normal, stupid mistakes that would’ve gotten him killed on the job. House parties and awkward hook-ups and all-nighters just before a final under the watchful eye of some prissy RA clocking his ins-and-outs. At least that was what late-night Skinemax and reruns of _Animal House_ had taught Dean college was like—though he supposed that a boringly chill RA would be okay too.

It was easier without Sam watching him, making notes in that spiral journal in his head about when Dean came and went. Before and after: how many buttons were done up wrong, whether or not there were faint stains on the knees of his jeans, how dark the circles under his eyes were. Easier without the questions—whether Sam said them out loud or not—and the dodging. Easier to not slip up, to not _want to_ slip up, when Sam wasn’t there to slip up to.

Dean couldn’t remember the first time, not really. He thought it might have been on a hunt where they’d left Sammy behind because he had some big test or science competition or something. Maybe his dad had sent him out to do some interviews with the locals or maybe he’d talked his way into the town watering hole while John flashed one of his fake badges down at the precinct. He usually didn’t let Dean play along as a partner (or, like Dean had suggested on one particularly slow hunt, a trainee)—said the age difference would raise too much suspicion. Dean didn’t really know what kind of suspicion his dad meant, but he didn’t challenge it.

Without Sammy there, Dean never challenged it.

So he couldn’t remember the first time, but that didn’t really matter. He remembered other times:

After an especially successful game of pool with sharp press-on nails itching at the collar of his shirt and a husky-silk voice, “These tables the only thing you hustle, kid?”

Digits for a burner cell scratched out shaky on the back of one of John’s Federal Marshal business cards for a rich newly-widowed-by-poltergeist dentist’s wife in the market for a few one-time ‘landscaping’ jobs.

Shivering in the unheated men’s restroom at a truck stop with Dad and Sammy asleep in the Impala and big, rough hands reaching out—“Got a light, sexy?”

A few overextended IOUs paid off, a few extra days in the motel room when their dad was running late. Some shirts and pants for when his little brother started pushing his wrists and ankles out of Dean’s hand-me-downs. Enough cash to get Sammy something nice for his 18th birthday, something that made all the thick-cut lines of anger and resentment that’d ground their way into most of his teenage expressions go soft and where the money came from didn’t matter so long as Sam kept looking at him like that.

A few weeks—no, Dean needed to be exact. Eleven days later, neck-deep in some stupid fucking argument that was always more about the ways that John and Sam were similar than they were about anything else, Sam had spat out:

“I’m leaving—going to Stanford! This is not gonna be my life!”

And Dean went cold, like ice cubes chewed up between wisdom teeth, when their dad answered:

“Fine. But if you walk out that door, you don’t come back.”

When the fall semester started, Dean made it to Fresno before pulling off the highway. He stopped at the first place with cramped, tinted front windows and the neon “Open” sign flickering on. Gulped down a few hippie California beers, got $75 off the guitarist for an 80s tribute band, and had a fresh-faced amateur boat show model trying to drag him out the door before the bartender called closing time.

He didn’t go home with the sailboat girl, but he didn’t go to Stanford either.

After that, Dean told himself that he’d give it some time. Wait for Sam to call, check-in, see how they were doing. Let Sam have his space, and take some of his own too. Take John’s loose attention and do what he couldn’t have done with his responsibility riding sulky in the backseat.

Only Dean was starting to learn that he didn’t know what to do with space. Didn’t understand what it could give him that cramped quarters with Sam couldn’t. And boy, he didn’t want to dwell on that either. Didn’t want to pick at whatever had started to scab over now that Sam had cut himself out of their life and sewed himself up into _normal_.

So he hunted, he conned, he hustled—anything to not sit next to their rent-a-room phone and wonder why it wasn’t ringing. It’d started with women—that much he could remember—but they weren’t always around (or looking to pay when they could get it for free). Guys were easier—to find, to negotiate with, to walk away from—and he’d learned pretty quickly that the same smirks and winks worked no matter who was sitting across from him. They were usually older too, gruff and gritty and all the other things that Dean didn’t want in his real life outside of back alleys and bathroom stalls and that made it easier too.

It’d almost been two years when John got a call from one of his contacts that there was a werewolf pack running out of Palo Alto and it was so close, had been so long, that Dean figured he owed himself the trip. But Sam was out and his little runt of a roommate didn’t know where—with a chick (a _girlfriend_ , the stubby kid had emphasized) or maybe his friends. At the library or a movie or somewhere in town and _it doesn’t matter that’s okay nah, don’t tell him that I stopped by_.

He’d been laying on the hood of his car, arm tucked under his head and space left for someone next to him who wasn’t coming, parked out at some nature preserve near the coast when a weak half-cough sounded near his feet. Dean craned his neck, awkward and tight; a long Gumby-stretch of a kid in a faded t-shirt and loose gym shorts was standing there, kicking at the gravel. He had a mop of dull brown curls that bounced over his eyebrows and a crooked set of lips that he was chewing at and both his hands were shoved into his pockets as far as they would go. When he looked up, his eyes were the same dull brown as his shag—a matching set.

“Want some company?” His voice cracked out, like it hadn’t been warmed up right.

Dean blinked, propped himself up on his elbows. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.” The kid shifted, glanced at Dean’s left shoulder.

Dean dragged himself up to a better angle, stared at him long and hard. Quirked one corner of his mouth and hummed behind his teeth.

The kid pulled a hand out of his pocket and scratched at the loose skin on his elbow.

“Nineteen.”

He was skittish, overgrown and underdressed and when he finally looked back at Dean that dull brown almost reflected hazel under the waning moon.

Something stuck in the back of Dean’s throat as he slid off the hot-sticky metal. “I could have some company.”

And Dean only had two hard-and-fast rules with all of this—

  1. No freebies
  2. (assuming he had it from John for long enough) No sex in the Impala



—but he broke both of them that night.

 

**_iv. Dress Code_ **

Jess had asked him once, silly on three margaritas and her glow was contagious. She’d asked Sam if he’d do it, if she bought him a pair that was big enough and didn’t have any itchy polyester lace or runching—would he wear them?

Sam had giggled, dipped in for a kiss. “Sure.”

But she must’ve forgotten, or only been half-serious, because the subject never came up again.

If it had, Sam would’ve told her that he hadn’t thought about it before. Hadn’t even crossed his mind. Not like there was a pink pair—faded hot to pale—with little white stripes and a shiny waistband tucked under the dummy board in his dresser. Not like he took it out when his roommate left for the weekend and put it everywhere but on. Not like it wasn’t his to wear anyway, because he’d stolen it from the secret duffel bag pocket that Dean thought he didn’t know about like the weird little pervert he’d been (still was).

Not like—if she asked—he’d even be able to explain why. Why he’d taken it, why he still had it, why—out of all the family photos and mementos that he didn’t have—this was the one piece of home he couldn’t leave behind.

Not home—Dean. Of course those two had been one and the same for…forever, if he had to quantify it. But Dean and a pink pair of panties hadn’t been a thing until the summer between Sam’s junior and senior years when he’d had a whole two and a half months to not worry about having to skip town and end up in a new classroom seven states away rereading _Heart of Darkness_ for the fifth time. A whole two and a half months to be able to catch Dean more than just in and out of the motel room bathroom and in the hall between class periods. A whole two and a half months to maybe finally ask a girl out and spend half a $4 movie making out in the back row like a regular seventeen-year old boy was supposed to.

And he _liked_ girls—it wasn’t that he didn’t like girls—but they were everywhere and nowhere. Another temporary part of their temporary lives as each new town blurred out the back window of their dad’s Impala and it was hard to get attached. That was it. That had to be it.

Because if that wasn’t it, then there was something _wrong_ with the way Sam would rather sneak bags of Cheetos and Peanut M &Ms into the theater with Dean than get a chance to get to second base with a nice (nameless) girl.

Not getting attached didn’t seem to be a problem for Dean, or maybe Dean just didn’t see it as a problem worth having. He was pretty good about not bringing whatever he did in his free time back home (not home, just another crappy motel room) but at least in the summer he’d set aside some time for just the two of them. Teach Sam how to properly clean his weapons, help him fill up rock salt bullets. Goad Sam into competitions to see who could field-strip their gun the fastest.

Sam usually lost those, but he was getting quicker with the pieces.

“Hey, can you get the _Secret Treaties_ t-shirt out of my bag?” Dean worked a bore brush into the barrel of his Colt M1911A1. “It should be mostly clean.”

Sam grimaced, but still lurched off the bed. “Which one is that?”

“It’s B.O.C., man.” Dean rolled his eyes, played it up for effect. “Come on, Sammy, you gotta know your classics.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that when I’m trying to hit on 50-year old metal heads.” Sam unzipped Dean’s duffel, rummaged around for a few seconds longer than he absolutely needed to before landing on the shirt, worn-thin and more grey than blue at that point. He was about to swing around and throw it over Dean’s head on probably-not-purpose but then something peeked out from under it, something jammed in the seamed-in zipper along the inside corner of the bag.

Pink and stripy and definitely not anything Sam had ever seen in Dean’s wardrobe and he wanted to investigate, wanted to tug on that thread but Dean was already muttering behind him and snapping his fingers to get Sam’s attention.

Sam hurled the shirt on reflex; it hit Dean in the face with a muffled thump.

It wasn’t until school started again that Sam had a chance to rifle through the duffel uninterrupted. He held the cotton, gentle and still, like it might crystallize and shatter in his hands. He stretched it between his thumbs, prodding his fingertips against it to see how much it could give. After a while—long enough to start worrying about Dean showing up—Sam decided to shove it back in the secret pocket.

He hesitated, half a half-second, then brought it to his nose and inhaled.

He didn’t know what he’d been expecting it to smell like—floral soap and a sick-sweet musk that sometimes clung to Dean when he’d roll in, probably. Or fresh-scent laundry detergent, with a hint of lint. Or nothing, just fabric and elastic and the nondescript smell of _clothes_.

Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t the familiar tang of sweat and gunpowder and their dad’s aftershave that Dean slapped on when he thought no one was looking. Wasn’t a musk without sweetness and too strong to have just been transfer from the rest of the bag.

The panties ended up balled in his fist and he ended up locked in the bathroom, heady and hard and just this side of horrified. He took care of it—had to take care of it unless he wanted Dean banging down the door and reading between the red flush torn across his face and the angry bulge in his jeans—but he kept his eyes open. Couldn’t risk his big brother, tied up delicate in pink and white, waiting behind his eyelids.

After that Sam kept them, and if Dean noticed that they were missing he didn’t bring it up.

He’d made a few trips to a lingerie boutique in San Francisco that carried more _specialized_ sizes once he got settled—or as settled as he’d ever be—at Stanford. A piecemeal hypothesis had been knocking around in his brain for a while; maybe it was tactile—the difference between a smooth slide and the starch itch of boxers. Maybe it was the concept in general and not toned legs littered with scars and green eyes burnt gold around the rim in particular.

Sam couldn’t decide between tight black silk tied up with ribbons at the hips and teal cotton with a few rhinestones around the waist; in the end, he bought both. Tried them out: hidden by old boxers in his room, then under loose basketball shorts on quick runs to the library or student union once he felt a little more confident about the whole thing. He liked the feel of it, what it packed up and what it left exposed. Liked the edge of a thrill, the possibility of a reveal, how everyone he knew would drop their mouths open and murmur: _Really, him?_

He liked the hush-hush, the biting his tongue against the moans. Liked having another secret to share with Dean.

He kept meaning to tell Jess, toss it out casual over coffee or cover her eyes and drop a pair in her lap when they were in bed. He kept meaning to throw out the old pink ones, kept telling himself that if this was about a fetish then he didn’t need them anymore.

Four years and he kept meaning to but—for some reason—he just never did.

 

**_v. Skills Training_ **

“Dude, why’d you buy a whole new set?” Dean tugged at the loose end of the coil; noted that it was smoother than the frayed hemp one he kept looped up in Baby’s trunk.

Sam cocked his head, gave Dean the squint that meant whatever Dean’d said was either obvious or ridiculous. Maybe both. “Because I don’t want to get rope burns. Your knots are tight, man.”

Dean scoffed. “You’re just out of practice, Sammy.”

It was out before he had a chance to catch it, tripping out of his dumb mouth before the impulse control that their dad had tried to drill into him sent up the flare. It was a joke—not even a barbed one, just one of the three dozen smartass lines Dean threw out each hour that they weren’t bickering or eating or sleeping. Or shooting some evil son of a bitch in the face.

Jokes had always been allowed. The older they got the more Sam tacked on groans and huffs that were probably supposed to convince Dean that he was getting too mature for lame one-liners; it just made Dean deploy them with more glee. But that’d been then, before four years out of the life and two years without even picking up the damn phone and it taking John going MIA and his pretty, apple pie girlfriend going up in flames to get Sam back in the seat next to him.

Now Dean wasn’t sure what was allowed, what he could get away with before his little (big, solid like a tree trunk now) brother took off again. And he had things he wanted to say—some jokes and some not—but none of them were worth Sammy (Sam) walking out that door.

He snuck a look at Sam from under his lashes; his cheeks were splotched pink in a few places and he was chewing his lip but his eyebrows weren’t laced tight and his teeth weren’t out. No skin broken.

“Do me first.” Sam rolled up the sleeves of his flannel, held his wrists out towards Dean. His fists were balled.

Dean studied the tick of his tendons. “We should probably use a chair. That’s the likelier scenario.”

Sam nodded, brisk and cooperative and Dean loved the fight his kid brother had in him but those scattered moments—few and far between—when Sam listened to him without a kickback always hit him funny in the gut. Made him want to worm in under the skin and tease Sam, but also made him want to be gentler with his brother than he’d needed to be since Sam was out of discount diapers.

Made him want to—

But that was something Dean couldn’t get away with. Not now, not ever. Shouldn’t—wouldn’t. A moot fucking point, regardless.

They picked the sturdiest of the three chairs in their room; when Sam sat down it only wobbled a little. Dean pulled the rope two, three, four times across Sam’s chest and then hooked it around his wrists behind the back of the chair. Tied it off with a Prusik shackle and made sure that he could slip a finger between the knot and Sam’s skin.

“Ankles too.” Sam sat stock-still; the only move he made was to clench and unclench his fists. “At least make it a challenge.”

Dean snorted, gave Sam five loops to work his feet out of. After tugging at the cords he moved back by the beds, crossed his arms and let Sam get to it.

Sam shifted, tried a few experimental squirms.

“Hope you don’t have to pee.”

Sam glared out behind his bangs and Dean made a note to pick up a pair of shears.

“Shut up.”

And Dean had a comeback, another smartass comment or a smug-soaked smirk at least, but then Sam started to move.

He rolled his shoulders, one and then the other, judging the weight and give of the pull. Twisted his hips, ground up into the air and Dean shouldn't have been tracing the stretch of his shirt or the shifting grooves his muscles left in the fabric. He wiggled, shimmied and grunted against the nylon friction as he caught a few strands along a loose nail. When it started to fray he moved sharp and fast, working the metal deeper into the fibers with short jerks up and down. His whole body shuddered, collarbone to heels, with each slice.

Sam wasn't looking, wasn't paying attention to anything beyond the snap of each cut thread. He'd started to sweat, sheening along his forehead and in the dip of his neck. Dean swallowed tacky and dry.

For a crazy lost second, he wondered what kind of burns the hemp rope would track across Sam’s bare skin. If the spiral rings would bite into his chest and leave red-angry rashes behind, or if they’d rub at the callouses and scars and leave fresh sanded lines instead. What Sam would say if someone asked; if he’d give a bland, day-old-stale answer or if he’d shrug it off with a tight, uneven smile and let whoever’d asked choose their own ending.

He wondered if Sam would ever let Dean tie him up without the challenge, just to see how safe Dean could keep him. How tethered and grounded he could be, how much quieter everything would be without the rolling credit repeats of _things that fell on their shoulders_. Dean guessed—didn’t need to guess—that that show got real boring real quick.

Dean wondered if, bone-deep down, the knots sometimes felt more like a safety net than a prison cell for Sam too.

Then Sam laughed—one loud bark—and tore the last of the strands apart. Slid out of the wrist loops and shrugged off the chest ties. The rope around his ankles went last; he untied Dean's handiwork with a few careful tugs.

“Done.” He held up a handful of mangled chunks of rope and tossed them at Dean’s boots. “Time?”

Dean’s spine snapped stiff; he hadn’t even been pretending to count the second hand on the watch Bobby’d lent him seven years ago and never asked for back.

“Not fast enough.” Dean flung off his canvas jacket just a little too hard. Kicked at Sam’s feet until he stood up and shoved what was left of the nylon bundle into Sam’s empty palms.

He sat down heavy and rough—crossed his wrists behind the wooden curve of the chair back. Hooked one eyebrow up at Sam.

“Let a professional show you how it’s done.”

 

**_vi. Required Reading_ **

It was research.

Research was Sam’s area, his whole shtick, and what else was he supposed to do when something new reared its weird fucking head? Of course, this wasn’t really something new _per se_ —and it definitely wasn’t the weirdest thing in their world anymore. It hadn’t even been the weirdest thing in their world back when Sam had first discovered it, link-hopping between forums that all shared the same red and black color schemes and loopy cursive fonts until he landed on a page with the header “More Than Brothers” and realized that this was gonna be a whole _thing_.

He’d scrolled through the first three pages of posts—comment threads collapsed by the dozens—and came to a couple of conclusions:

  1. More people seemed to consider themselves “Dean girls” than they did “Sam girls” but the Sam girls tended to defend…him…much more intensely.
  2. Very few of the posters seemed to have a clear sense of the mechanics of lock picking, grave digging, just how paint-dry boring being cooped up in a motel room for weeks on end was, and how cramped the back of the Impala could get—especially after you grew half a foot over Christmas break.
  3. Pretty much everyone agreed on Dean’s lips being distracting. (Sam asterisked this one, wondered how these fans could’ve known without ever having seen them.)



So he’d gathered some intel, figured out what they were dealing with so they could come up with a plan. Dean stared like Sam had just eaten a whole bag of circus peanuts in one go but it wasn’t like Sam had actually _read_ any of it.

“They do know we’re _brothers_ , right?”

And the snide, reckless little voice crackling behind Sam’s ear drum had whispered: _How could we forget?_

Sam hadn’t clicked that ‘Archive’ button until it was minutes to midnight and he could already feel Lucifer licking at his insides.

The first line of the first story read: “Dean still hadn’t forgiven Sam for not letting him go.”

And Sam closed the page, X’ed out of the whole damn browser; he couldn’t reread all of his mistakes spun out in neat paragraphs and braided towards what he’d never get—a happy ending of any kind with his big brother.

Sam—minus a gooey soul—had shuffled through more than a few collections in between runs with the Campbells. He read them mostly just to laugh at the more imaginative logistics of sex between guys (not that a few giddy, clumsy college two-or-three-night-stands had been all that thorough of an education) but at some point he found himself making half-serious lists of all the things he and Dean might have meant to each other. If he’d had to describe the dynamic to an outsider, objective and rational, he would’ve called it melodramatic and excessive.

If he didn’t have to be diplomatic about it, he would’ve called it pathetic.

Once all of his kaleidoscope pieces had been jammed back into place (even the ones ready to cannibalize the rest of them) Sam started saving a few favorites for the days when he couldn’t quite cut along the dotted line. Couldn’t quite remember why he or them or this world was worth saving anymore.

It wasn’t just the sex—(and that should’ve been _wasn’t the sex at all_ but Sam was the only one really keeping track)—it was the ways the Dean and Sam in those stories could burrow into each other’s skin and bones. How they could claw their way out of the years of leaving and aching and fear and betrayal into something reverent.

The stories got a hell of a lot of things wrong—but the strange-set crave within Sam, the corners of him that knew some kind of capital-G-God had to exist because he’d worshipped Dean before he’d learned how to pray?

The stories he bookmarked hit into that strain every time.

 

**_vii. Drugs_ **

Sam paused with his (absurdly, outrageously) long fingers fidgeting at his belt buckle. “Dean, we’ve talked about this. We have a plan.”

Dean nodded. It was true, they did have a plan. They had a plan for pretty much every godawful demonic, celestial, and/or magical shitstorm that there was even a hypothetical chance they could get caught up in. Every once in a while something came along that surprised them and they had to wing it, but this wasn’t a surprise. No, this—this was probably one of the first contingency plans they’d ever made.

“I can do it if you don’t want to.” Sam pulled the cracked leather through his belt loops and dropped it on the floor. The carpet was faded out and stiffer in some areas, which never boded well. “As long as we don’t think that it’d be picky about who does what?”

“It’s magic dust. How could it have special requirements? Other than the obvious.” Dean swung his hand around the bulge in the front of his jeans, not sure whether he should point at it for emphasis or fan out his fingers to try and hide it. A flush licked up the cords of his neck. “Of course.”

Sam grit his teeth, puffed out hot air through his nose. “It’s an aphrodisiac gnome pollen, Dean. The gnomes could have rules.”

“The gnomes could have rules.” Dean wrung the sentence out, deadpan. It bought him another ten seconds of ignoring how Sam’s pants tented against his zipper. “Save some of the dirty talk for the bedroom, stud.”

It was absolutely, totally, 5000% the wrong thing to say the wrong button to push the wrong door to open and Dean realized that right as it tumbled out, before he could chew it back in and swallow it down. He waited, feet cement-stuck in place, for Sam to remind him—remind them both:

_No dirty talk, Dean. It’s like stitching up a bullet hole or resetting a shoulder—just one of the liabilities of the job._

Sam pressed his lips together into a thin white line. Dean watched the cherry wine color bleed back in when he pushed them out again.

“I think we should go for orgasms first, keep penetration as a backup. Not do any more work than we have to, you know?”

Dean nodded once, decisive like Sam needed reassurance that he’d just cracked the case. “Yeah, agreed.”

Sam popped open his fly button but didn’t zip down. “Clothes on or off?”

“On.” And it was too fast, a primal reflex that had nothing to do with not wanting to see and everything to do with the exact _opposite_. Dean pretended like he didn’t catch Sam’s flinch. “Maybe just tees and boxers? I don’t wanna have to scrub cum out of my best flannel.”

“Okay, first of all dude, gross.” Sam crinkled his nose and it was just like when a sneeze snuck up on him; Dean clenched his fists along the seam of his jeans. “And how is _that_ your best flannel?”

“Don’t hate what you can’t understand, Sam.” Dean pulled at the buttons, popped them out two at a time. It was momentum—someone had to get going or they’d just stand there until their erections literally killed them—and Sam started peeling off his layers too. Jacket, flannel, button-up, shoes, jeans and then it was just them again. Them and nothing but one and a half Big Mart underwear sets between them.

Dean told his knees to unlock, told his legs to lurch forward, but it was Sam who took the step in.

“Um, hands or—?” Sam made a vague gesture and then cut off abruptly, pulled his fingers back to scratch behind his ear.

“Hands should be fine.” Dean reached out, curled his knuckles just above the dip of Sam’s hip. Kept it firm, perfunctory. All business. “We can keep the ‘um’s for Plans B through…E.”

Sam’s eyebrows hooked high. “E?”

 _All that college learning gone to waste._ A voice that sounded like Azazel, like Alastair, like the whisper-suck of Purgatory and soul-damning temptation dragged its teeth along the inside of Dean’s ear.

_Bet I could teach you a new trick or two, Sammy._

Dean shook his head, would’ve hoped that it’d jar the voice loose if he hadn’t had years of losing that battle already.

Sam’s palms were strange, warm, tentative against Dean’s chest and he hadn’t realized that he’d closed his eyes until they blinked open to a horizon full of his brother—crooked, pinched nose and scattered moles and low lashes under a shear of hair that wasn’t quite long enough to stay hooked behind his ears. Dean wanted to reach for it, wanted to brush it back, wanted to be tender and teasing. Wanted to make Sam smile, wanted—

Wanted this to be something that it wasn’t, that it couldn’t be.

He blinked again and pushed Sam’s hands down. Didn’t stop until they were pressed against the heavy bulge in his boxers, and then he slid his fingers under the worn elastic of Sam’s waistband. Through matted, wiry curls and wrapped around the base of his brother’s cock and it was so hot, unnaturally hot. Sam was burning up, burning through Dean’s skin or maybe Dean was on fire too. Gnome sex pollen and all that.

“Dean…” Sam sounded stretched thin, pulled apart like cobwebs and hadn’t he just been his normal self—all prissy and competent and half a second away from rolling his eyes so hard that they popped right out? Hadn’t he been calm, reassuring, in control? One of them had to be anyway, and Dean didn’t know if he had the stomach for it anymore. He gripped tighter, pulled faster—rough and dry and friction raw.

Little pants burst past Sam’s open lips; no sound, no words, just wet puffs of air every now and again. Lines creased across his forehead and his lashes still hung low and fluttery. He’d worked his knuckles into the loose fly and rubbed them up the underside of Dean’s cock. Hooked a thumb around and tugged and it stung like the chafe of Dean’s fist must’ve but Dean didn’t mind the hurt. Didn’t mind the pressure cooker set to boil along his veins, or the thud against his skull like his brain might be trying to break out. Didn’t mind dying like this, if he had to. If this was how it was supposed to go.

Although, if he _was_ dying there was something Dean wanted to check off his list. He swayed forward, in, swallowed down some of Sam’s panting for him.

They’d both agreed, made it rule number one while outlining this specific scenario:

“ _I feel like it’s a given but—no kissing, right?”_ And Dean had looked to Sam for confirmation, tight lips and a curt nod. _“Unless it’s some sort of kissing curse, I guess.”_

But if this was it, Dean figured that he’d be allowed the exception.

“Sam.”

A hiccupy gasp, a shudder shaking from his shoulders down, and Sam still wasn’t looking at him. Wouldn’t look at him, Dean knew then, and even if this was their last case he wasn’t gonna force it. Wasn’t gonna force Sam—had already forced him enough for their fractured collection of lifetimes.

_Some wishes ain’t for nothing but the grave._

Dean knocked his forehead against Sam’s, felt their fever just on the edge of breaking.

“It’s okay.” Dean let his eyelids fall heavy, focused on the flare of pain and the cool, damp breath between them. “Sammy, it’s gonna be okay.”

 

**_viii. Extracurricular Activities_ **

She was pretty, glossy and confident and maybe a little older than Dean (and wasn’t Sam glad that his brother hadn’t kept on chasing 20-somethings at the far end of his 30s). She came over on a mission, had been clocking them since they’d settled into a corner booth and Sam noticed right away. Could always seem to tell when someone else was trolling for Dean’s attention. Dean hadn’t noticed until he was three whiskey sours in and Sam kept glancing off towards the bar. He was forcing eye contact, trying to establish something:

Interest, permission, the stipulation that Dean always came back to him afterwards—he couldn’t say.

She tilted her head, smiled like her teeth might be filed to points, then she uncrossed her legs and walked long and cool to their table.

It’d been third-wheeling after that, laughing off-beat and letting Dean tell all his most humiliating little brother incidents and picking at the soggy-wet edges of the label on his second craft beer bottle. Telling himself that Dean deserved this—the flare-ups from the Mark hadn’t been kind to him and Sam knew that he needed to blow off some steam.

They both did, but Sam wasn’t invited. Was never invited. Of course. Only—

Only this time he was. Sam’d worked his best wingman moves, set it all up for Dean to disappear wherever it was that he went between _closing time_ and _rise and shine, Sammy_ , but she hadn’t budged. Said she wanted the package deal or nothing; Dean looked at Sam, eyes wide with all his good intentions smothered down under liquid courage.

There’d been jokes before, winks and nudges from Bela and Pamela and a half dozen others living adjacent to their lives and they were always met with Dean’s face twisted somewhere between itching discomfort and run-for-a-bucket sick. Sam would smirk and wink back and nothing else, and sometimes Dean’d gotten lucky and sometimes they both rolled snake eyes and it didn’t really matter either way because that wasn’t a card on the table.

Maybe the Mark, going dark, walking in the black smoke topside had reshuffled the deck—Sam couldn’t be sure. The way Dean had looked at him in the bunker with the demon blade nicking his neck, and before that even. Cuffed to the chair in the middle of a devil’s trap, hissing and taunting and licking at all the salt he was dousing Sam’s wounds with.

Dean’d been laid bare—his underbelly exposed, every infected sore he’d ever tried to hide left oozing and festering. Dean—the _real_ Dean—would’ve done everything he could to keep that under wraps from Sam, from anyone. But that Dean—the snarling, rabid thing that had crawled into his brother’s body and been spoiling it from the inside—didn’t care. Just let it all out, and in the middle of all his demonic word vomit there’d been some truths.

‘ _Cause right now I’m doing all I can not to come over there and rip your throat out—with my teeth._

And Sam would’ve—could’ve let him.

“She’s pretty persistent, huh?” Dean huddled Sam into the already-cramped bathroom like she might hear if he was too loud. “I do like a take-charge attitude though.”

“Well then go for it, man.” Sam shifted against the paper towel dispenser. “You don’t need my permission.”

“Yeah, but you heard her.” Dean locked his gaze with Sam’s, didn’t blink. “Two for one or no sale.”

“Are…” Sam’s throat went tight like a noose. “Are you _kidding_?”

Dean’s tongue darted out like maybe his mouth had gone a little dry too. “I mean, she probably doesn’t mean the whole thing together. I figure, we have a solid foreplay session and then we take turns while the other one…I don’t know…stays in the bathroom?”

And Sam had to laugh, because otherwise he might do something unhinged like tear out of the bar like a bat out of hell or crack a right hook across Dean’s jaw.

Or say yes.

“C’mon, Sam. It’s not like this is virgin territory for us.” Dean winked and Sam didn’t smell as much whiskey on his breath as he should. “Pun intended.”

Sam told himself that this was for Dean, that if sharing a hook-up through a hollow-core door kept him from solo hunts in the thin hours of the night, kept him from coming back caked in blood spatter and filth, kept him from getting himself killed just for the thrill of it—then it was worth it. Sam told himself that he’d bow out as soon as he could, maybe even excuse himself to use the toilet right when they got back and let Dean work his magic from there. Told himself that he didn’t want it, not like this, not with the looming question mark of whether it was Dean or the sear on his arm calling the shots.

She—Thea, but no last names—smelled like grass and clover, tasted like lime soda and mint. She was a biter, a scratcher, chewed nails that shouldn’t have left welts but did. She was wet and insistent and tight like a vice and Sam hadn’t even backed halfway out of the wide motel bedroom before she was reining him in, telling him he could pee when they were done. Dean just stood there, toed off his boots and shrugged.

Dean smelled like engine oil and the gas station taquitos they’d microwaved for lunch. Sam didn’t know how he tasted, didn’t want to find out in the middle of a half-negotiated threesome that there was no guarantee they’d ever talk about again. Keep some lines unbroken, keep some secrets for just them.

Dean didn’t bite or scratch, didn’t bruise or break skin. Thea pushed him down on his back and he stayed and Sam told himself that he was watching her lines and curves as she straddled Dean’s face but his palms were running up Dean’s calves, against the hair, and bumping over his bowed knees. Dean’s cock was right there—laying heavy in the hollow of his stomach—and Sam didn’t want, didn’t want, _didn’t want_.

His brother tasted bitter, blood and sweat and a spicy musk thick on Sam’s tongue and this was Sam’s underbelly sliced navel to chin, seeping out onto the tangle of yellowed sheets beneath them.

 

**_ix. Feedback & Evaluations_ **

It’d been a good hunt, cleanest hunt they’d had in months. Amara was locked down with Crowley—not that Dean trusted that schmoozy demonic meatsuit or that him having whatever The Darkness was was a particularly good thing, but at least they had her on the map. Cas was wing-deep in their shared Netflix account, wrapped up safe and locked down in the bunker. Things weren’t great (when were they ever great with a Winchester or two in the mix) but the world wasn’t ending again yet and Dean was feeling generous.

“Hell of a job out there, Sam.” He knocked their elbows together across the leather seat. “How many fangs did you take out? Like a dozen?”

Sam glanced at Dean out of the corner of his eye, cleared his throat. “Eight at most. And they were coming off a feeding, so they were pretty slow anyway.”

“Nah, they were juiced up and ready and you took each one of those sons of bitches down. That’s impressive, Sam.” Dean’s palm hovered above Sam’s knee for a beat before clapping down. He lingered for a few extra seconds. “Take the compliment.”

“Okay.” Sam’s voice stumbled out awkward and Dean was suddenly flooded with echoes of first shaves and ticks on a dozen walls in inches grown and cracks in the middle of words that Dean only sometimes teased about. “Thanks.”

“’Course.” Dean clicked the radio volume down a few notches. “Look, I know we haven’t been… _I_ haven’t been as supportive as I should’ve been these past few—years, I guess. And I haven’t ever been good with compliments, really. But since we’re tryin’ this whole ‘changing’ thing out I could probably try to be a little less…”

“Of a dick?” Sam offered in the needling tone that kept him biting at his bottom lip to keep from giggling. Dean couldn’t even really be mad about that.

“Shut up.” It was half-hearted, a slur in the syrup of exhaustion and crashing adrenaline and genuinely being okay with being cooped up together now. “I’m trying to say something here.”

“So say it.” Sam was slouched in his seat, curled in on himself but turned towards Dean. He blinked slow and kept his teeth behind his smile.

Dean glanced down for as long as he could keep his eyes off the road. Sam was puffy and soft, blurred against the rain tracing down the window behind him. A steady bass riff buzzed along the dashboard and he could feel it crackling between his knuckles.

“I’m proud of you, Sam. You’re a great hunter and you’ve always been there to save my sorry ass and I know you don’t get the credit you deserve—”

“Neither do you, Dean.” Sam mumbled, chewed it out into the air. “That’s just how this job is.”

“From the civilians, sure.” Dean propped an elbow up on the door. “But I could’ve given you more credit. Maybe if I had, you wouldn’t have…maybe things would’ve been a little easier.”

Sam rearranged his too-long limbs and sighed. “When has life ever been easy for us? That’s not on you though—I don’t give you enough credit either.”

“You gave me enough credit that I wouldn’t kill you, even if Death said it was the only option.” Something wormed around the base of Dean’s neck, a phantom itch that reminded him that he’d have to pay for that eventually. “Gave me credit that I could kill Abaddon—and that I could come back from, you know. Gave me credit that I could beat the Mark.”

“Yeah.” Sam scoffed, rolled his head and stared up at the roof. “And we saw how that turned out.”

The tires slipped for traction and Dean eased up off the gas pedal. “Sam, you gotta stop doing that. You gotta stop tearing yourself apart when things go bad. It’s your fault, it’s my fault, it’s some other asshole’s fault—at least you’re doin’ it for the right reasons.”

“Really?” Dean didn’t need to look to know that Sam’s eyebrow was arched sharp and brutal, like he’d already caught Dean hook, line, and sinker. “You’re gonna lecture me about letting things go?”

“I’m gonna lecture you about whatever I wanna lecture you about. Big brother’s prerogative.” Dean grinned. “So let me lecture you about how not-lame I think you are, before I stop feeling so generous and go back to tough love and emotional constipation.”

“Sure, okay.” Sam jerked his hands, palms up. “Knock yourself out.”

“Thanks, I will.” Dean watched Sam’s ghost of a reflection, etched out in the bounceback of the headlights and the puddles of water on the windshield. Thought about what he wanted to say—what he really wanted to say—now that Sam was giving him an opening. Things between them had been weird since—well, since forever, if Dean was being honest about it. Weird in ways that weren’t really weird at all—not for Dean—and Dean didn’t feel weird about them, not like he should.

Not anymore.

“You’re strong and quick, and you’ve got a right hook that I’d kill for. I’m faster with a gun but you’re better at pulling the trigger. You don’t hesitate when something’s gotta be dropped, but you’re more careful about making that call. You’re smart, man, so fucking smart but you never make anyone feel stupid. You’re better with animals and kids and I think that’s because they know. They can sense it, you know.”

“What?” Sam sounded winded like he’d just jogged up a flight of stairs.

“That you got something in you, Sam. Something at your core that’s good, no matter what else got shoveled on top of it.” Sam squirmed and the slippery imprint of him against the glass swayed with it. “It’s not something that came from Dad or me either—you’ve always had it, Sam. Even when it might’ve been better that you didn’t.”

Dean thought about all the ways that being good had hurt Sam, had gotten Sam hurt over the years. He thought about how truly terrified the soulless doppelganger of his little brother had been once he realized the agony that would come along with reseaming his soul. Thought about how Sam being good had sometimes been the only thing keeping this dump of a world from the armageddon of the week, and how—all things considered—if the choice was between saving humanity and getting Sam off the torment wheel once and for all Dean wasn’t 100% sure which card he’d flip.

That sticky-sink of rumination was kicking up again—the familiar sourness that ruined every good mood—but Dean didn’t want to chase off this clumsy gentleness yet. He turned again, shuffling for an almost-joke that Sam could roll his eyes at, but then choked on it like he’d swallowed a mouthful of cotton balls.

Sam was flushed pink in splotches across his neck and up his cheeks, trailed down under the open top button of his flannel. He was blinking rapid, eyes darting everywhere except Dean, mouth slack and chewed on. He looked— _no,_ Dean ground down his molars, _we’re not gonna go there right now._

Embarrassed, that’s what he looked like. Awkward and anxious, like when he was six and ate all of Dean’s secret cookies (the ones that Cheryl Tuft had brought in especially for Dean’s eleventh birthday, at least according to the school registration papers their dad had faked). He was trying to sit still and failing with each squeak of the car seat leather. His hands hovered high on his thighs like he couldn’t decide where they should go and his jeans were bunched tight at his—

Everything about Sam—his sunken posture, the red burning up the cords of his neck, the slight tremor in his usually rock-steady hands—told Dean what he wanted to know. What he didn’t know he’d been asking or even wondering, what Sam was unzipping about himself. And it could’ve been half a dozen other things: dark, cruel things that could unmake Sam, things that Dean wouldn’t have been able to do.

(Shouldn’t have been able to do any of it, but that was a whole other bucket of bullshit.)

But this? Dean could do this— _wanted_ to do this. Wanted without the deflection of an adventurous chick between them, without the loom of excruciating death by magic douchebaggery. Wanted to tug at this string and see if he could unravel Sam just because, speeding 70 down a county highway in the afternoon rain.

 _And ain’t that something_ , Dean thought. Pressure like a fist punched through his chest and squeezed and he didn’t know what this was exactly—not now, not yet—but it was absolutely, definitely something.

 

**_x. Policy on Ethics_ **

“I told you, it’s fine. It doesn’t count when you’re hexed.” Dean sat on his bed, ankles crossed, studying his new vinyl of Boston’s _Don’t Look Back_. Wouldn’t look up at Sam in the doorway, not that Sam was gonna call him on that.

“Just forget about it.”

Forget about the way all his secrets—his secrets’ secrets, his not-even-admit-it-to- _himself_ secrets—had been coaxed out, had been teased past three decades of repression Rube Goldbergs and vomited all over the one person they absolutely had to be kept from. Forget the way he’d babbled _I know we can’t say it know we’re not allowed to say it but I love you I_ love _you in all the ways every way even the ways I_ can’t _love you Dean I love you in those ways the_ most.

Forget how Dean had smiled at him, small and sweet and sad, and said _I know, Sammy, me too_.

Sam forgot a lot of things, walled them up alive and sometimes he could still feel them scratching from inside but he didn’t know that he could manage that this time.

“I don’t think I can, Dean.” Sam pulled at a loose cuticle that was black from something—probably dirt or grease or gun oil—before clarifying. “I don’t think I want to.”

And that was it, wasn’t it. That was the pass code, the skeleton key, the unspoken—unspeakable—cue. That was the jenga piece that broke the tower at its joints and sent it crumbling down. Sam had the beat between those words coming out of his mouth and Dean starting with a careful, bitter “ _Sam”_ to take it back, nod it off, board it back up and swallow the nails down. It’d be uncomfortable then, but it’d be the same kind of uncomfortable that followed them the morning after their first, second, third threesome—acknowledged but shoved past. The same kind of uncomfortable that poked at Sam when he caught Dean staring only to shrug it off with a hard laugh and some dumb comment that was just a slice more snide than it needed to be.

Uncomfortable because they didn’t talk about it, Sam realized. That they’d never talk about it if it were up to Dean, that they’d keep erasing and redrawing the line without saying what that really meant, with the assumption that it was just loneliness and ambiguous morals and helping each other out. Like they always did.

And Sam was gonna say that—some of it, all of it, as much as he could get out before Dean threw a punch and shoved him out of his room—but Dean was looking at him now, pulling in a long breath and it was too late.

“Well then—” And Dean’s tone was careful and slow, but without the bitter sting. He slid the record on top of his nightstand. “What _do_ you want to do, Sam?”

What he wanted to do…Sam wanted to go back in time, back to the beginning and rewire them to be something a little closer to normal. Or skip back a few hours and cut his tongue out before it got a chance to spill all his impossible hopes onto the linoleum kitchen floor of a suburban revenge witch. Or claw back to the first time he saw Dean—stupid, beautiful, fragile, kicking at the end of his teenage years—and _wanted_. Go back to when he had more reckless, angry courage and drag them down together then; at least that would’ve saved them all these years of stuffing it down their throats and pretending like they weren’t suffocating on it.

“I want to kiss you.” Without Dean’s fists cracking him away, Sam wandered closer to the bed, shoulders hunched and hands shoved halfway into his jean pockets. “Can I—can I kiss you?”

Dean closed his eyes, huffed out a burst of air, swung his legs off the bed. This was it, the line that couldn’t be uncrossed. Sam braced himself for the ridge of knuckles and the blood pooling around his gums.

Dean’s palms were cool and dry, curved under his jaw with thumbs pressing along Sam’s cheeks. Sam’s eyes had been open but he still hadn’t seen it coming, still couldn’t quite unclench just in case Dean’s fingers started to wring around his neck.

He tasted Dean first—cheap coffee and smoked bacon from the burger he’d insisted they stop for after ganking that dark magic soccer mom—and then felt the two-days’ worth of stubble growth and the seam of Dean’s most recent split lip and the strange, sweet way that Dean pressed in but still kept a few inches between their bodies like Sam might be the one to start swinging. Like he wasn’t sure, like he couldn’t really believe it either.

Sam wound his arms around Dean’s ribs and dragged him in, locked his fingers tight at the small of Dean’s back like a padlock. The soft bites became wide and desperate, tying the pieces of their broken moans together and it wasn’t enough, would never be enough—Sam knew that now—but at least they could have this.

“Sam.” It was a gasp between lips and teeth, coppery like blood at the back of Sam’s throat. “What do you want, Sam?”

“You.” He sucked at Dean’s lower lip, caught at the corners of his mouth. “This. I want—”

Every touch, every taste, every scent, every sound.

“I want—”

Everything that wasn’t him was Dean.

“—this.”

_Everything._


End file.
